i'm coming home (to the place where i belong)
by stopthenrewind
Summary: You'll never love yourself half as much as I love you. You'll never treat yourself right, darling, but I want you to. Quinn/Finn, Quinn/Santana friendship. Follows current canon, though sorta AU.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **i'm coming home (to the place where i belong) (1/4)

**Summary: **You'll never love yourself half as much as I love you. You'll never treat yourself right, darling, but I want you to. | Quinn/Finn, Quinn/Santana friendship. Follows current canon, though sorta AU.

**Author's Note: **Got a buttload of Glee (and then Finn/Quinn) feels after I heard _Homeward Bound/Home _for the first time, and god. I miss the old Glee. There are a few things incanon that never happened in this universe: i.e. Lucy (should have) never existed, Finn never outed Santana and never tried to manhandle Quinn at senior prom (so basically, he's not a world-class douche), and Rachel and Finn broke up at the end of season 3 and had no contact since then.

Also, 4x08 _Thanksgiving _and whatever came after never happened in this universe.

* * *

_What if I fall and hurt myself,  
would you know how to fix me?_

::

"Where are you from?"

She hesitates, a brief second before the clouds of fear are gone from her face; her smile is too wide and her eyes are too bright, but she doesn't care.

"Lima. I'm from Lima, Ohio."

::

She sits atop the bleachers, looking out over the vast expanse of green of the football field. Her palms flatten against the cold metal beneath her, cold air that bears the smell of winter tickle the hair that swings just below her shoulders. She inhales, oxygen going deep into her lungs and she keeps it there for a long moment.

There's something about the air in Lima, she thinks as she closes her eyes and lets the sensations swirl around her, enveloping her, and for a minute she forgets where she is. Forgets that she's back, back in the place where she promised she wouldn't return.

Long eyelashes lightly graze her cheeks as her eyelids fold slowly, and she sits there, stock still, with the air sweeping around her, and it makes her feel different, makes her feel that this place is different, makes her feel that _she's _different.

For the first time since she stepped off the train and set foot back in Lima soil, the smallest of smiles tug at the corners of her lips.

(She thinks she came back to _Lima, _but she didn't come _home._)

::

Mandy, her roommate, asked her once: "Do you miss it?"

"Miss what?"

A shrug. "Home."

She almost scoffs, but she holds her tongue. "Sometimes."

She's nonchalant.

She's also lying.

::

A finger lightly grazes the tips of hers, but she doesn't force her eyes open. She catches a faint whiff of his scent, so very familiar and it makes her chest hurt in places she's still trying to let New Haven heal.

"I didn't know you were coming home for Christmas," he says, his finger brushing across her frozen knuckles, sending tingles of warmth down her arm. She breathes in slowly, and he smells of freshly fallen snow and aftershave and rugged cologne – just insanely _him _that she just smiles a bit, in spite of herself.

"This isn't home," is all she says, and she knows it's not an appropriate greeting to give an old friend, an ex that she hasn't seen in almost six months, since the summer, but she feels like her tongue's stuck to the roof of her mouth, immobile, refusing to let go of the things she should have said, things she should say.

She glances at him out of the corner of her eye. He looks different; his hair shorter, his body stockier, his skin browner. His eyes, though, they look exactly the same, warm and friendly and open. He looks more tired, though. Older, even.

"It wasn't, yeah," he agrees, surprising her, "for a while. Things are so different now. Like, I dunno, I've been gone for only a couple of months and I come back and suddenly there's all this new people and stuff I don't really fit into anymore…" He tugs at the end of his tie, hanging loosely around his neck; the old Quinn would have fussed over it, _tsk_-ing as she straightened it and then fixed his hair afterwards. She just kind of thinks it doesn't matter now anymore, that it's something that makes him Finn, that he would just come to school tomorrow with a tie as similarly crooked, anyway.

So she just says, "Yeah" and then proceeds to stare at nothing.

"Weird, isn't it?" She doesn't look, but she knows he's watching her, observing the contours of her face with that look of intense concentration he always gets. "Being back."

She nods. His finger's still grazing hers, and she has this stupid, crazy urge to either pull her hand back or clasp his fingers, if only to get a grasp of how things felt like before she left, because things just feel so _foreign _now. It's stupid. She's not supposed to want to hold his hand anymore.

"But…y'know, with all the glee kids coming back here, and then _you _being back…" She catches one side of his lips curving upwards as he turns to look at her. "It's finally starting to feel like…_home _again, you know?"

She _doesn't _know, but it's Finn, so she smirks, then hides her smile, anyway.

::

He invites her out for dinner ("Just between friends, of course"), and she rolls down the window of his truck, her hair getting caught and tangled in the wind, but she doesn't mind; just breathes in the evening air with her heart in her throat. She doesn't take her eyes off the road, her fists automatically stiffening on her lap. Flashes of screeching tires and blood in her hands and shattered glass and searing pain on her back and numbness in her legs – they all burn into the backs of her eyelids, and she wants to thrash against her tightly-fastened seatbelt, wants to scream, wants to sob and cry, and she tries to stifle the whimper that inevitably leaves her mouth.

He glances at her but doesn't say anything, just puts on Mumford and Sons as he drives (really, really slowly) through the dark streets of Lima.

She doesn't admit it, but she's grateful.

::

"I've been back home since the beginning of October," he tells her over dinner, eyes hesitant and fork hovering over his steak. "I'm taking over glee club while Mr. Schue's gone." She almost laughs, but then realizes he's serious. She still has an urge to laugh, anyway, because this is the stupidest idea Mr. Schue's ever had, and that's saying something. "He's coming back in a week, just in time for the big winter festival at school, right before Christmas break. I really hope you can come. We're doing a bunch of Christmas songs and everything."

She draws in a breath; her food lies there, barely touched. "I want to, I really do, but I'm trying to avoid McKinley," she admits, finally, but she doesn't meet his eyes still. "I just – the football field was the nearest I could go, and – things have just been going so well for me at Yale, I don't want…"

She stops, because talking about high school is painful.

He looks like he understands, though, and she supposes that's one of the main reasons why she used to like him so much.

::

"I loved high school," she would tell her friends from Yale, while they're lounging in this great coffee place near her dorm that she frequents to study. "I had the best time. I was head cheerleader, I dated the quarterback, and I was a member of the glee club. We won nationals last May. I graduated valedictorian, and when I got the letter from Yale, I knew where my life was headed."

People from Yale eat it up, look at her with respect, even adoration.

Clean slate, and all that.

::

She doesn't tell Finn the real reason why she's back, just lets him drive her home, her lips lingering on his cheek, as if to savor the moment but really just dreading going inside the house.

"Thanks for dinner," she says softly, lips still ghosting the stubble on his chin. "I…it was really nice hanging out with you again." She means it. It was. It still is.

He smiles, this stupid, lopsided smile he always used to do when he knew he was being stupid and didn't want Quinn to be more annoyed than she already was. She totally doesn't find it adorable anymore, though. "How long are you staying in Lima?"

She glances up at the house, tries to hide the sigh that heaves from the bottom of her chest. "Um." She doesn't look at him. "I've got three weeks off from school."

"Great," he exclaims, and she honestly doesn't understand why he's grinning a little too widely at the prospect. "Do you have dinner plans tomorrow night?"

::

There's a surprised shout, and then Santana's a blur of green and black when Quinn enters Breadstix, the skirt of her red dress swinging just above her knees and a book clutched against her chest like a lifeline.

"You ass!" Santana exclaims in lieu of a greeting, nearly crashing into her, arms wrapping around her neck like her life depended on it. "We were texting just last week and you didn't even tell me you were coming home!"

Her shoulder lifts in a shrug. "Surprise, then? Should I have told you I was coming?"

Santana huffs into her neck, "Bitch," but Quinn can feel her best friend's lips curve into a smile against her shoulder. Her arms tighten around Santana's back, and she breathes in the familiar scent of her, all strawberry and lavender, clinging onto her hair and skin.

::

Puck tells stories about picking women up along Sunset, and Mercedes rolls her eyes, complaining about how Puck would show up at her apartment at the worst times to see if she wanted to hang out and get drunk at one of the karaoke bars downtown. Mike's eyes are bright and excited when he tells them of the dances he's learning at Joffrey Ballet, about how he has the most amazing teachers and how they tell him he's getting better and better every day.

Santana is quiet from beside Mike, laughing at all the right moments and injecting insults directed towards Finn from time to time, but Quinn notices the way her hand clenches around her fork when Puck hollers very inappropriately about how fun college is.

Finn's not much different, his smiles looking forced and pained, even though he claps Puck on the back and tells him how he's "really happy for you, man."

"How about you, Quinn?" Mercedes asks, and Quinn notices how her friend's voice adopts a gentler tone. "Is Yale everything us little people can only dream about?"

She smiles, folds her hands neatly on her lap, eyes bright.

"It is," she laughs. "I'm happy."

(Only she's not, not really).

::

She pushes open her front door, stepping cautiously into the dark, silent house. She doesn't call out her mom's name, knows she's probably passed out on the couch in front of the television again, like she's been since the day she first came back.

She finds Judy just like that, one arm dragging on the floor, fingers clasped loosely around an empty bottle of vodka Quinn swears she hid under the laundry just the same morning.

She sighs, grabs the afghan off the back of the couch and throws it over her mom's drunken form, pries the bottle away from reluctant fingers and tosses it into the trash.

She remembers her father's email, angry, with no single trace of concern: "I will not stand for this humiliation. If you don't do anything about your mother I will personally come to Lima and take care of her myself!" She remembers slamming the top of her laptop down, hands shaking and blood rushing in her ears. She thinks about coming home and seeing her mom, dressed in an old nightgown and sitting in front of a blank television, eyes glassy and body weak. Broken, lonely, alone.

She remembers her bags dropping on the floor as she rushed to catch Judy before she tumbled on the ground, trying to reach her. "Quinnie," her mother had mumbled against her chest, the words struggling to come out despite her stubborn tongue, her harried brain. "Quinnie, I missed you. Quinnie, you came home."

Months have passed and the Fabray household has been the same way she's always known it to be, with the stench of expensive alcohol lingering in the stale air.

::

Finn arrives at her doorstep the next morning, but she keeps the curtains drawn as she peeks behind the door, trying to smile back. She hopes he doesn't come any further, hopes he doesn't smell the vodka she just poured down the drain on her hands and clothes.

"Hi," Finn says, smiling at her like the big idiot that he is. "Do you want to go have coffee with me? We could walk to The Lima Bean, if you don't want to go for a drive. I don't have to be at McKinley for another hour, so."

He looks so _stupid _like that, in his big grandpa sweater and his hands shoved into his pockets, grinning at her like they've been doing this for months, like there's nothing at all weird about him randomly showing up at her house at seven thirty in the morning.

"Um." She reluctantly opens the door halfway, feeling self-conscious about only being in rumpled sweats with her hair in disarray. "I don't think I – now's not really a good time, Finn. I just woke up and I have a lot of errands to do until the afternoon, so."

"Oh." He has the decency to look a bit disappointed. She wishes she doesn't care. "Right. Sorry, I wasn't thinking… I just. Um. You know. I know you're only staying for three weeks and I wanted to spend – I mean–"

She wants to laugh, because this all feels so familiar yet surreal. "Um," she lets out a breathy laugh, anyway, tucking unruly strands of blond hair behind her ear. "How about…dinner later, instead?"

"Are you sure? I mean, you don't have, like, plans or something?" She peers at him, checks to see if he's being a jerk about it, like she's not allowed to _not _have plans for the day, but he's watching her expectantly, like he genuinely wants to know.

"No, Finn," a tiny laugh leaves her lips. "I'm free by six. Just give me the time and tell me where to meet you."

She tries not to think too much of the grin that spreads on his face. He looks like a freaking puppy. "Breadstix, eight o'clock?" Finn's eyebrows are quirking, and – god. She can't believe he still remembers, so she agrees. You know, for old time's sake.

::

She ignores Santana's texts and goes to see her mom's doctor after lunch, talks with him until late in the afternoon; she describes the assortment of bottles in the kitchen cupboards, talks about how her mom leaves in the morning to have brunch somewhere with the WASPs in town and to run errands before picking up her daily supply of alcohol and coming home, alone.

Dr. Martin slides a piece of paper across his desk, and her eyes flick downwards, catching sight of the words _St. Rita's Addiction Services _in his untidy doctor-like scrawl, beckoning at her from the top of the lined paper.

She sighs inwardly, and then feels the urge to slap him when she looks up and sees the sympathetic look in his eyes. She doesn't fucking need his sympathy.

"I'm sorry you have to take care of all this alone," he says, still with that stupid expression that makes her hands clench into fists.

"Yeah, well," she stands, extends her hand out to him a bit stiffly. "I'm used to it. Thanks for your time, Dr. Martin."

::

She'd had to make dinner for her mom after she got home from the hospital, not answering her mom's faint "Where are you off to?" as she shrugged into her coat and hurried out the front door. She then had had to drive really, really slowly, her seatbelt fastened too tightly against her upper body and her eyes staring too widely out her windshield.

When she gets to Breadstix, it's ten minutes past eight and she's _really _annoyed when she finds that Finn's not there. She drops inside a booth and snaps at the waitress who approaches, "I'll order when I'm ready," and proceeds to send death glares at anyone who looks at her after her outburst.

There's a hand on her shoulder, and it's too big and too warm and too familiar; she already knows whose it is.

"I was in the men's room when you came in, Quinn," he explains before she can utter a word, and he smirks at her, and – god, he's so annoying. "You look really beautiful."

She's not even dressed up for this; she's just in a blue dress with a cardigan over it, her hair slightly curled at the ends, but Finn's looking at her like – like he's seeing her for the first time or something, which is stupid. Her anger's already evaporating, though, and since when did she – _god_. She scowls as he settles on the seat across from her, smiling at her over the menus being handed by their less-than-friendly waitress. He really is annoying.

::

She can smell his cologne from across the dinner table.

The smell hits her, hard, and she doesn't know why but she feels her pulse quicken. All she knows is that she's overwhelmed with feelings of nostalgia, of familiarity, of things and people and sights and sounds and smells that used to matter to her and that she sometimes wishes still do.

Finn starts talking – nervously, she thinks – his hands clumsily holding his fork and knife. He's always been the talker between the two of them, but something about today, about _now, _makes her actually want to listen this time.

"I don't know what I'm doing with my life," Finn says, completely out of the blue, right after his story about Burt falling asleep in front of _American Pie. _"I feel – I feel so _useless, _you know? I mean, I got kicked out of the army, I'm back in Lima, and – I don't know where the hell I'm supposed to go."

Even though she's thinking the exact same thing, she frowns, rolls her eyes. "You know what, Finn?" she says, sticking her fork in her pasta with more force than usual. "You really need to stop with this stupid pity party of yours. Not everything is about you, and frankly, it's pathetic."

Finn doesn't say anything, and she keeps her eyes glued to her plate.

::

"You were right."

"About what?"

Finn sighs as he wraps his coat more tightly around himself as they walk around town later, shoving his big hands into the pockets. "About earlier. About me being pathetic."

They haven't talked much since her outburst, and she looks at the pavement, feeling blood rush to her neck and cheeks. She knows she ruined their otherwise relatively nice evening.

"Finn–"

"No, it's okay," he says. "I got to thinking, actually. About me. About my life. And you're right. It's not the freaking end of the world if I feel like I haven't accomplished anything, because there's still time to fix things, you know? You're actually the only person to tell the truth to my face, really. I guess I needed that. I needed that slap of reality, because let's face it, I _am _pathetic."

She can't help the tiny, tiny smile that forms on her face, and she can't help but feel like maybe Finn's grown up a bit. "You really are."

He laughs, shoves her lightly. "Look, I really hope you come to McKinley tomorrow. I mean, all I have going for me right now is the glee club thing, and I'm really…I don't know, it's so tiring trying to fill in for Mr. Schue and stuff, but it's – it's kinda rewarding, too, y'know? I mean, we did win Sectionals, so that was awesome. I really wanna take this seriously; I don't want Mr. Schue to come back and think he's made a huge mistake letting me take over."

She bites the insides of her cheeks to keep from smiling wider. "What's happening tomorrow?"

"I'm picking up their costumes tomorrow for the big numbers next week, so the whole club can focus on the actual performance now, and I just – I really want you to be there." He's looking at her with those big puppy dog eyes that look stupid on him but just _works._

She sighs, exasperated, clumsily fitting on her mittens to shield her stiff fingers from the cold. "_Fine_. I'll go," she says, even though her heart's fighting to come out of her chest at the very idea of stepping back into McKinley halls.

Something catches in her heart when Finn grins widely, throwing an arm around her shoulders, keeping her warm, keeping her steady. "Awesome."

::

Brittany knocks her into a hug as soon as she steps into the choir room, all blonde ponytail and short skirt and the familiar scent of jasmine that she's come to associate with only her.

"_Quinn,_" she breathes, her voice muffled against Quinn's neck, and Quinn laughs.

"Hey, Britt."

She sees the rest of the glee club grinning over Brittany's shoulder, Finn grinning from ear to ear and Sam flashing her the stupid _Avatar _sign from behind with a goofy smile.

Everyone's happy to see her back, and Santana just rolls her eyes and tells everyone that "It's only Quinn, god," that Quinn just laughs, the sound vibrating throughout her body as something warm stirs in her chest.

::

While the new New Directions are in front of the room singing a funny rendition of _Santa Baby _for the grads, she observes the room, studies the excited smiles on the newbies,eager to impress; sees the contented smiles on her friends' faces, sitting beside her on the familiar red chairs on the risers she's grown accustomed to in the last three years.

She wonders whom of her friends are really, truly happy. As happy as their smiles are willing to deceive. As happy as their eyes could only wish to evoke.

Or maybe she's just looking for people who are as lonely as she is.

She stands up abruptly, almost toppling over her chair. By the time she's reached the door, the song's gone to an abrupt halt, and she leaves her friends in the choir room behind sitting in stunned, confused silence.

::

"Okay, what's wrong now?"

Santana's followed her out into the silent, empty hall, and she sighs, because she's not at all surprised.

"Nothing; go back to the choir room. I just needed some air."

"Stop shitting with me," Santana snaps from behind her. "Face me and tell me the truth, tell me what's bothering you. I'm tired of your shit, Quinn, and you never tell me anything, so how the hell do you expect us to help you? We can't keep following you around, trying to understand your fucking mood swings all the damn time."

"_Stop,_" she pauses, closing her eyes, "trying to psychoanalyze me."

"You're fucking – I don't even know what to think of you, Quinn. You don't want to tell us anything about yourself but then you hate us for trying to figure out what's wrong with you. How the hell are we supposed to figure you out? We want to help you because we care about you, but you never want to let us."

Quinn barks a short, dry laugh. "That's rich, coming from you."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You never bother to tell _me _things, Santana. And you never seemed to care before now. So why is this any different? Before I got pregnant, we were fighting over being head Cheerio. When I got pregnant, you stopped talking to me. And you never bothered to, for months. We're not friends. Why the fuck should I tell you anything?" She shakes her head, starts walking away again. "I should never have come back."

"Yeah, since you _love _Yale so fucking much, maybe you _should _have stayed there. Maybe you should have stayed with your special secret sorority and your nerdy little friends and your boring as fuck books and shut yourself away from the world like you always seem to do."

"What about you, Santana?" Quinn says, spinning to face her, her expression distorting into an ugly sneer, even though her voice is unnaturally quiet, even calm. "Why are you in Kentucky, shaking pom-poms and strutting around in short cheerleading outfits, trying not to look at all the other pretty girls' legs and trying not to get off at all them changing around you?"

"You–" She wants to take back her words the minute she's said them, but it's not like she could take a remote control and rewind time. Santana's getting red in the face, her hands fisting at her sides. "Take that back."

"No, because you know what?" She's on a roll now. She can't let Santana make her look vulnerable, and this is – only she has the balls to say what needs to be said. "You're nothing but a scared little girl who stays in Kentucky and breaks up with the love of her life because she's too scared of going out into the world to fight for what she fucking wants."

Santana scoffs, red-faced, dark-eyed, and Quinn knows, Quinn _knows _she's hit a nerve.

"And what about you? You're nothing but a crazy little girl who got pregnant at sixteen with her _boyfriend's best friend; _a sad, lonely girl with no friends and forty million problems and who sleeps with a picture of sweet little _Beth _under her pillow every fucking night like a–"

Quinn doesn't even think.

She's there in four long strides, and her mind's heatedly blank as her palm ricochets upwards and meets Santana's face in a loud smack.

::

She's shaking when she gets home, her hands fumbling for her house keys, and she hears a car pull up on the sidewalk behind her.

"Go away, Santana," she says loudly, pushing the wrong key into the lock. She curses when she drops the key ring, and a long, slender hand reaches out and grabs it for her. She looks up into a pair of sad blue eyes.

"Hi, Quinn," Brittany says quietly.

::

She tries to make Brittany leave, but she's stubborn, pushes her way into the house. Quinn can't help but cringe when a gasp leaves Brittany's mouth as soon as she steps into the living room.

"Britt–" Panic rises in her throat, but she then sighs, because if she's being honest, she doesn't know _how _the hell to begin explaining what this _is_.

Brittany doesn't say anything, though, just turns to her with big eyes that are wet at the corners. "Um. Quinn, I – do you need help with anything tonight? I can…fix dinner, you know, Santana taught me how to make pasta and stuff."

Quinn laughs a little, but it's half-hearted, tired, broken. "You don't have to, B; I can just order some pizza for tonight. But thanks."

"Okay, but I'm staying over, okay?" And then Brittany's walking over to Judy, not giving her a chance to reply, and she wraps the blanket around her mom in such a tender way that makes Quinn's throat tighter than usual.

::

"Why didn't you tell us?"

The pizza's almost completely gone, three slices left in the box, soggy now, and cold. "I don't know, I just…I don't know. I'm kind of…I wanted to deal with it on my own."

Brittany sighs, taking Quinn's hand and placing her fingers in the spaces in between Quinn's own. "Quinn, you shouldn't – you don't have to deal with stuff on your own _all _the time, you know."

Quinn sighs, too, places her head on Brittany's shoulder, feeling like she's hanging onto her warmth, her gentleness, her strength. Her heart is fractured but Brittany's heart is whole.

"Britt," she says, almost chokes on the words, "I don't – I'm not – I'm so..._lonely._ That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm trying to deal with things on my own, but I'm not sure if I'm doing it right because things are going so well for me at Yale but I'm not entirely _happy. _And then there's _this _and my dad calling me and trying to take over things–"

"It's okay, Quinn." She feels Brittany's lips touching the top of her hair for a long minute. "You don't have to talk about that right now. You're tired. Just sleep, okay? I'll be here in the morning."

So she does, and she doesn't dream.

::

Brittany leaves really early the next day so she could change for school, but Quinn doesn't go. She takes her time, making breakfast for her mom, kissing her on the cheek when she stirs in her sleep but doesn't wake.

"I don't know what I'm doing, Mom," she whispers, gently tucking an unruly strand of blond hair behind her mother's ear. "How am I going to take care of you? What do I need to do?"

She perches gingerly on the coffee table and watches her mom's chest rise and fall with every labored breath. She doesn't get an answer.

::

She's sitting at the park, alone, when a big shadow falls across the book she's holding on her lap.

"What are you doing here, Finn?" she mumbles, not even looking up.

Finn smiles, ruffling the top of her head as he settles down beside her; she has to bite her lip to keep from smiling as she reaches up to smooth down her hair. Finn laughs; she knows it amuses him to see how annoyed she is, with her hair all messed up like that. No one ever touches her hair.

"You weren't–" He sighs. "Do you want to talk about what happened yesterday?"

She bites her lip, plays with the corners of her worn-out paperback with her fingers. "A lot of things happened yesterday."

"Yeah, but…_Q_." His voice cracks, and she looks away, tugs her wrist away from his outstretched fingers. "I just wanna know what's going on with you." His voice becomes more pained, and her throat is tighter than ever, that feeling it gets when she's on the verge of tears, "Q, talk to me. Stop – stop running away from things."

"Don't try to act like you still know me, Finn. Don't try to _fix _me." She shuts her book with a thud and stands, gathering her belongings. She tries really hard not to look at his face; she already _knows _what his eyes are probably saying. "I've made it four months at Yale on my own. I don't need your help. I don't _anybody's _help." And she walks away without looking back.

::

She doesn't expect him to show up at her house at seven-thirty in the evening.

But there he is, standing on her doorstep like some overgrown moron with a tentative smile on his face and an arrangement of lilacs and baby's breath in his hands, dressed in a sweater vest with his hair neatly combed. It makes her rethink her decision to slam the door in his face.

"Hi." He flashes her that stupid lopsided grin again. He thrusts the flowers at her, looking shy. She doesn't find him at all cute right now, no, she does not. "Um. These are for you."

She doesn't take them. "What are these?"

"They're, um, lilacs? The florist mixed them up with some baby's breath to make them even prettier and stuff. I know how much you like them because they actually _smell _good, and I know you don't like roses, which don't, because they're like the default flowers people like to give and I know you don't like that–"

"No, I meant–" She shakes her head; it's like she can read his mind, it's like she can _see _the gears in his brain whirring, like he's going off-track on purpose to distract her from being angry. "What are these _for_, Finn?"

He shrugs, pushing his hands in his pockets like he always does when he's nervous, and, okay. Maybe she does find him a little bit cute. A little. Maybe. "I wanted to apologize, for earlier."

"Finn–"

"No," he says, raises a hand to stop her from interrupting. "No, it wasn't fair. We haven't seen each other since graduation and it's not fair for me to just – to just force you to tell me what's bothering you."

"Nothing's bothering me," she says, automatically.

He shakes his head at her, and – when has he learned to look so condescending? "Quinn."

She sighs. "Finn."

He stares at her for a long moment, so long that she almost wants to lower her eyes, but she doesn't, just straightens her back ever-so-subtly to remind him who's the one in control here. She hates how her hands are shaking.

"Look," he says, "I just want you to know that you can talk to me, okay? I don't know what's happening with you, Q." The last part's said in a low voice, so low that she barely hears it.

"_Nothing's_–" she heaves a sigh. She kind of hates him right now, the way he's standing there trying to apologize, trying to be nice, trying to psychoanalyze her when she doesn't fucking want to. He's just looking at her, his eyes somber and looking like – like he wants to do something stupid like take care of her or something. So she hates him, and she hates herself, because she kind of wants to let him. And it's so annoying, because she's not a fucking china doll that can break any second. She's not _weak. _She's _not. _She's not supposed to need anyone. Least of all Finn, who she's barely spoken to or seen before she came back to Lima.

So she just flicks her eyes upwards, trying to ignore steady thumping inside her chest.

"Why are you here, Finn?"

His smile is tentative. "I–" he laughs a little, "I wanted to see if you wanted to have dinner. It's almost eight."

He looks so hopeful and she wonders when he became so easy to like. He wasn't always so easy to like. "I didn't realize that was, like, a nightly thing."

"I wanted to make it one. You know," a shoulder lifts, "if you don't mind. I mean, I missed spending time with you."

She doesn't say, "So why didn't you even bother to call me since we graduated?" or "Why do you even care _now_?" even though she really wants to. It's not like they ended things on a good note two years ago; it's not like they were friends all senior year or hugged at graduation and told each other to message the other on Facebook or call or keep in touch.

So she just smiles and opens her door a bit wider. She knows her mom's in her room, watching television, and annoyed with Quinn for throwing out her last bottle of wine, but Quinn's sure her mom wouldn't dare go off on a tangent when she sees they have company. "Do you mind waiting while I go change?"

He smiles wider, touching her shoulder, and feels an inexplicable warm tingle go down her arm. "Of course not." He thrusts the flowers at her again, and she takes them this time, burrowing her nose among the soft petals. "I don't mind at all."

::

"Hey, Q," Finn is saying as Quinn goes down the stairs, stuffing her house keys and her phone into her purse, "I really like this photo of – oh." He's looking at her as she walks towards him, his eyes wide and his hand dropping the framed picture he grabbed off the mantelpiece.

"Oh," he says, looking flustered as he bends down to pick it up, "crap, it's not broken, is it?"

Quinn laughs, feeling a little flustered, herself. She keeps replaying the look on his face over and over in her mind; she flashes back to two years ago, when he's standing at the bottom of the stairs before junior prom, in a cummerbund the same color as her dress, looking up at her with something almost like awe. It's…been a while since someone had looked at her that way. "I never cared much for that stupid photo, anyway." She spares a glance at her thirteen-year-old self, posing at the top of a cheerleading pyramid with her arms high up in the air.

He clears his throat, extending his arm out to her, still looking at her with that look in his eyes. "Shall we?"

::

That same look is still on his face, and it's throwing her off.

She's just staring at him across the console of his truck as he tells random stories about his brief stint with the army. His eyes are bright, his talking animated, and – he looks happy. She kind of likes the way the lights from the dashboard reflect across his eyes, and he makes her feel like she's sixteen again.

"–so Jim was like, 'Dude, you're kind of freaking me out here,' and the drill sergeant was _not _happy and just stared him down. Jim looked like he wanted to piss his – what?" he stops abruptly, looking at her, sitting there in the passenger seat of his beat-up old truck.

"Why are you looking at me like that?"

"Like what?" She grins at the confused look on his face.

"Like – I don't know. Like I have something on my face or whatever."

She laughs, shaking her head just as her phone buzzed in her purse. "You don't. You just – you look different."

"Different?" He genuinely sounds puzzled. "It's been a few months since I got a haircut–"

"No, not like that. I mean, you look happier than I've seen you since I got here."

"Oh." His voice turns real quiet, and he swivels his head to look back at the street. "I don't know. Maybe I am."

"Glee's been really fun, huh?" she says, looking down at her phone.

It's Santana, texting her for the nth time the entire day. _How long are you gonna keep ignoring me? Youre leaving in 2 weeks & I dont want u to leave hating me._

"I don't think glee's the only thing keeping me happy these days," Finn is saying, but she's not really listening anymore.

"That's great," she says, but she's looking out the window now, her thoughts a million miles away.

::

She's just met with Dr. Martin again the next day, her nose buried in papers while walking down the busy hospital hallway when someone steps in front of her, blocking her path.

"Hey." It's Santana, dressed in a leather jacket Quinn knows is her favorite, looking tentative, even anxious.

She releases a strangled sigh, though if she's being honest with herself, she's kind of maybe relieved that she's here. "Great. It's you." She tries to sidestep her, but Santana follows stubbornly. "Get out of my way, Santana."

"Q," Santana sighs, and she sounds tired, that she doesn't want to be doing this any more than she does. "Stop being a bitch."

"If that's your idea of an apology, well–"

"Look, I'm sorry I mentioned Beth but you–"

"Go away, Santana!" And Quinn does the most immature thing she can think of, and shoves Santana against the wall before striding away.

::

She's just slamming the door of her car when Santana's red Mustang pulls up behind her.

"Fuck, Q," Santana says, jogging to catch up with her as she walks briskly up her front path, looking as pissed as she feels. "Slow down. Listen to me, okay, I want to talk to you."

"God, Santana, _I don't care_!" She swivels abruptly once she opens the door, and Santana almost runs into her. "I don't care if you want to talk to me 'cause I sure as hell don't want to talk to you."

"Quinn."

Quinn rolls her eyes, tries to close the door behind her, but Santana's persistent, walking in after her with a frustrated look on her face. Quinn shrugs off her coat, walks over to press the button on her blinking answering machine. "God, Santana, just get the hell out of–"

"_Quinn_," the voice on the answering machine says, and she freezes. It's the voice of a person she hasn't seen in three years. A person she'd hoped she would never see ever again. Her throat's closing up, and she can feel her heart hammering in her chest in what feels like a thousand times per minute. This is–

Russell Fabray clears his throat, and Quinn's grip on her phone tightens; she feels her palms start to coat in sweat, and she leans against the door, feeling dizzy and nauseous all of a sudden. She thinks she hears Santana call out a faint, "Hey, you okay?" from behind her, but she can't focus on anything else but her father's voice on the other end of the line.

* * *

**References**; title from _Home _by Chris Daughtry; opening lines from Rosi Golan's _Hazy_; summary from _Little Things _by One Direction (don't judge me)

So, um. This was totally meant to be a oneshot (and to be not as emotionally-heavy, so to speak), but then I started writing…and writing…and I _couldn't. stop_. So - I'm gonna have to break this up into probably four parts. Part two's already finished, so it will be up in a few days. Also, I have no idea how long winter break is in the US; where I live, we college kids usually get three weeks off from school, so I'm basing from that.

Review?


	2. Chapter 2

_What if I went and lost myself,  
would you know where to find me?_

::

Quinn wonders whether Santana can hear her breathing a little too much, a little too heavily. She can feel her hands shaking, so she presses them against her body, hoping Santana wouldn't notice. She can feel her hovering behind her, watching her with wary eyes. She doesn't want her to be here right now to witness this, to witness _her _breaking down, but she feels relieved, all the same, that she's not alone.

"_Your mother_," Russell continues, without preamble, sounding like the jackass that he is, "_was downtown today, and was found blacked out on a stool of some godforsaken bar. Naturally, the barmen took her to the hospital and called the emergency contact that was on her ID. I got the phone call while I was at a meeting in Columbus this morning, and I'd had to drive all the way to Lima because they all knew her daughters weren't in town and no one could take care of her_."

She feels her heart stop beating. Her father was in Lima? Oh god. She was just in the hospital, with her mother's doctor, pushing Santana against the wall, and if she had run into her father there –

She takes a shaky breath, and she feels rather than sees Santana step closer to her, feels her friend's hand on her back, like an anchor, keeping her steady.

Russell clears his throat again, and she wonders, in a brief, fleeting thought, what her mother ever saw in this man, why Quinn herself failed to see what an asshole her father really was. "_I was there this morning, but I only signed some paperwork for formalities. I_ _had to leave again immediately; business to attend to, you know, I'm a busy man. Your mother's–_" he laughs, and Quinn feels this overpowering blind rage building up inside of her; she just wants to be able to punch her father in the nose to wipe that smugness in his voice. "_Your mother's swell, Quinn. Really swell. She just adds more and more embarrassment to the previously respectable family name, and it's already had enough embarrassment to last a lifetime. I need to fix things. I've had enough_."

She swallows, flexes her fingers, and she feels Santana rubbing her back, soothingly, comfortingly, like she knows how much she wants to go to Columbus and hit her father's face.

"_So I hear you're at Yale now."_ Russell coughs a little, and she hears it, she hears how his voice shifts, how there's a tinge of bitterness in there. _"My granddaughter with you?"_

He – how are he – who is he to ask –

"He has no right," she can hear herself whispering, her mind numbingly blank with rage, and she doesn't care about how Santana's there witnessing this anymore, doesn't care about the hands gripping her trembling shoulders. "He has no goddamn right to mention her!"

She doesn't know when she shoves the phone away from the table so hard it slams against the wall – she just knows her hands are shaking too hard and she needs some air and she's done with him, she's just so fucking done with him–

She runs upstairs, nearly falling all over the cold steps. She hears her father's voice fade behind her, followed by a long, loud beep.

She feels cold, all of a sudden.

::

"Quinn–"

She ignores Santana's voice, just fumbles for the doorknob and stumbles inside her room, blindly groping on the wall for the lights. She goes straight to her bathroom and takes a long shower, letting the hot water burn her skin, soak up her anger and drain away her tears.

When she emerges, her eyes are tired and sore, her skin rubbed red and raw. Delicious smells are wafting from the kitchen, and she finds that Santana's prepared food downstairs. Quinn doesn't know how long she was in the shower, but she already feels a little better.

"Hey." She shuffles into the dining room, shyly wrapping her arms around herself, as if to shield herself from Santana.

"Hey." Santana smiles at her tentatively, dropping the last spoon on the table and gesturing to it. She doesn't ask if she's okay, for which Quinn is grateful. "You should eat."

"No, I–" she shakes her head, moves towards the door. "Thanks, but I need to go to the hospital. My mom–"

"My dad's taking care of her, okay?" Santana's voice is gentle, and she walks towards Quinn, her arms raised hesitantly. "He says he's taking care of all the paperwork and he'll personally drive her home in a couple of hours. Okay? You don't have to take care of her all the damn time. I know she's your mom, but she's not–"

"I don't – let's not talk about this right now," she says, and Santana sighs like she expected her answer.

"Okay, but you really need to get some rest first, okay? You look like shit."

Her sudden laugh surprises both of them, and Santana's lips curve into a cautious smile again.

"I'm sorry I shoved you. Back at the hospital."

"It's okay. We both did get into an all-out brawl in the middle of the hallway two years ago. A fucking genius slapper, that's what you are. I know I was such a bitch to you. I didn't mean it." Quinn smiles a little because she speaks Santana's language, and to her that's the best apology she's ever going to be willing to give.

"I know," even though she only half-does.

When Santana says, "Quinn," Quinn stiffens, bracing herself. She knows that tone, it means that Santana's about to say something serious and heavy again. "Your dad–"

"Hasn't changed a fucking bit."

"He's still the biggest jackass I know, to be honest."

"I don't – don't want him near me. Or my mom. I don't ever want to see his face again."

Santana clears her throat a little. "My mom's a lawyer, you know. She can–"

Quinn nods. "Yeah, I know." She does. She knows what Santana's trying to say. They stand there for a minute, studiously not looking at each other.

"Seriously." Santana takes a step closer, touching her gently on the elbow. "You do look like shit," and Quinn smiles. Santana gestures towards the table again, where the food's beckoning at her, making her mouth water; she realizes she hasn't had a meal all day.

"Are you sure that I won't die from your cooking?" she asks, and Santana's foot kicks hers under the table.

"Ass," she says, and Quinn laughs.

::

Santana offers to help a tired Judy to bed while Quinn talks to Dr. Lopez in the living room, trying to keep a brave, dignified face on when all she really feels like is crumbling and hanging on to him; she just wants to plead and beg him to help her, to help her mother, to take her mother away so she wouldn't have to deal with her. And Quinn knows that that's horrible and wrong and selfish, but Quinn has only been in town for a few days and she's already tired from trying to look after her.

She's already tired from trying to look after a 46-year-old woman who drinks herself to sleep every other night. She's tired of acting like the adult, tired of trying to take care of her mom and failing, tired of trying to take care of herself and failing, as well. All she wants to do is crawl under her blankets with some hot chocolate and a good book after a warm bath, trying not to think of her parents or college or her messed up life.

She's nineteen. She's _only _nineteen, but sometimes she feels like she's 90. She's so very _tired _of all of it – and she just wants somebody to take care of her now.

Santana comes back to the living room and perches on the arm of the couch Dr. Lopez is sitting on. Quinn watches as Dr. Lopez doesn't even stop talking as he reaches out an arm to curl around his daughter's waist.

Quinn remembers her own father, barely four hours earlier, how he insulted her mother, taunted her, made her wish she was born to a different family. She wonders why her life is so fucked up and she knows she played a big part of making it become so.

::

Finn arrives at seven thirty on the dot, while Quinn and Santana are watching an episode of _Friends_, just fifteen minutes after Dr. Lopez left. Quinn peers through the curtains, then hisses, "I don't want to see him," as she hurries upstairs to hide.

Santana's confused, but she complies, opens the door complete with a bored expression and a tone of voice to match. "You're at the wrong house, Hudson."

Finn frowns, and Santana rolls her eyes. "Um, I'm here to pick up Quinn. We're supposed to go to dinner tonight. What are _you _doing here?"

"Q's my homegirl, that's why," she says matter-of-factly. "Who says she wants to go to dinner with you? And since when are you friends with Q, anyway?"

Finn scratches the back of his neck, genuinely looking confused. "I…we've been going out to dinner since she came back."

"God. Finn! Stop – god, she just came home and you're already – is it Finn and Quinn season all over again? Is it two years ago?"

Finn sighs. "Santana, it's not a date. We're just going to dinner as friends."

Santana snorts. "Again, since when are you two friends? And besides, she doesn't want to see you right now."

"Did I…" Santana kind of feels sorry for him a little right now, though not very much. "Did I do something wrong?"

She sighs, then starts pushing the door closed. "No, it's just Q being Q. She's had a long day and she's not feeling so hot. Leave her alone, Manboobs."

"Wait!" Finn's palm is on the door, pushing it back open. "What's wrong? What happened?"

She just gives him a look, one she's honestly surprised he seems to get. "Go _away_, Finn. She'll talk to you in the morning."

"Um." He thrusts a bouquet of flowers through the open crack of the door. "Can you just make sure she gets these, then?"

She shrugs, taking the flowers. Just before the door closes, she sees him mouth, "Call me, okay?" and she nods.

::

Quinn's sitting cross-legged on the bed thumbing through a ratty old book when Santana goes upstairs, knocking softly on the door. She hands her the flowers and Quinn burrows her nose in them, taking deep whiffs of their scent.

"Friends with Finn, really?" Santana says finally, breaking the silence. "Finn Hudson, really? What is this, Finn and Quinn one-thousand-point-oh?"

Quinn rolls her eyes, stands up to place the flowers in the empty vase on her bedside table. "Shut up, Santana. We're actually friends now."

Santana scoffs. "Right."

She shrugs, not turning to her, fiddling with the arrangement like an obsessive-compulsive freak. "He…I don't know. It's nice being just friends with him for a change."

Santana sighs. "Q. I just don't want–"

"Santana." Quinn sighs, too. "We're friends. I actually _like _that we're friends. I know what I'm doing, okay?"

She doesn't say anything else about the matter.

::

The next day officially marks that Quinn's been in Lima for a week, and it's when Santana drags her to McKinley to watch Cheerios practice.

"I overhead that bitch Kitty saying she's gonna bring the Cheerios back to nationals this year," Santana says once Quinn's settled in the passenger seat of Santana's car, groaning loudly about being forced to go against her will, "and it'll be so much fun to go mock her and how they're falling apart without us. Britt's the only good thing about Cheerios right now ever since our fine asses graduated from that hell hole."

So they're sitting on the bleachers, laughing while Sue screams at an oblivious Brittany and toasting their Snickers bars together.

"I'm so glad to be off that fucking Cheerios diet," Santana says, leaning back against the metal seats and closing her eyes. "I still kind of miss being a Cheerio sometimes, though. Not that I don't like cheering now, in Louisville, it's just – I don't know."

Santana grows quiet, and Quinn doesn't say a word, just stares out at the field as Kitty's thrown into the air, her perfect form silhouetted against the dying embers of sunlight, spreading streaks of purple and red against the backdrop.

She stares down at her legs and remembers things – like how she cried in the hospital when she discovered she couldn't feel her legs, like how her heart broke when her doctor told her she'll never be able to do those stunts ever again.

::

She brings home Chinese takeout for dinner.

Her mom's sitting across from her, and they're eating quietly; she's thrown away everything left from her mother's alcohol stash and she knows her mom was embarrassed by what happened yesterday that she didn't dare go out today to get her fix. She knows Judy's having a hard time, but she really doesn't care. They haven't even talked about the whole fiasco and it's driving her _insane_.

When her mom offers to do the dishes, Quinn says, very, very quietly, "Dad called yesterday. Left a message."

She's not really sure what kind of reaction she's expecting. Her mom just freezes, then recovers and moves to take away her plate. "Oh?"

Quinn clenches her hands in her lap, feeling the anger building up inside of her. Was she really going to pretend like that was nothing? Like nothing happened at all? "Mom, we haven't even…"

"Let's not talk about this today, honey, okay?"

"But we never talk about anything!" Quinn stands up abruptly, her chair toppling to the floor. She knows her eyes are blazing, threatening to drop tears down the slopes of her cheeks. "Every single bad thing that happens in this house gets swept under the rug. We've never really talked about Beth or my accident or how you have a problem and trying to pretend like you don't. You pretend everything's fine but it's not. It's _not. _Dad's gone, Mom. He's gone, but this house is still the same."

"Quinnie, I–" Judy closes her eyes as she lets out a breath, then says, "I can take care of myself, I don't need you to look out for me–"

"But you _make _it my business, Mom! Ever noticed how Frannie never comes home? I'm the same. Ever since I set foot in Yale I was dead-set to never come crawling back. I'm finally…I'm finally starting to figure things out there; I can _breathe _again, I can forget how my life turned into hell when I was sixteen. If it weren't for you and your drunken ass I wouldn't have come back." She fumbles, grips the edges of the table to steady herself, feeling everything all too much all at once. "This isn't home. This wasn't home for the last three years."

Her mom has tears brimming in her eyes now, but Quinn doesn't fucking _care _anymore. Especially when her eyes are stinging and her heart's threatening to escape from her chest, fighting to tear through skin and bone and break into a million pieces, as if it wasn't already broken beyond repair. "Quinnie, baby, I'm sorry–"

"It's too late, Mom." She bites her trembling lip, turns away and swipes a finger under her eyes. "Dr. Martin recommended St. Rita's Addiction Services for you if you want to get better. It's a good institution, not too far away from here. I'm not forcing you to go, Mom. But please, for the love of god…please do it for yourself, if not for me."

She doesn't wait for an answer; she just grabs her purse and leaves without looking back.

::

She doesn't really have a particular destination in mind when she guns the engine of her car that she tries to avoid at all costs, not even surprised that her mom doesn't even try to follow her. She just drives, turning up the volume of her radio and trying to blink away her tears, not trusting her mind, not trusting her heart. Not anymore.

She randomly stops the car after ten minutes of mindless driving and brings out her phone, scrolling through her speed dial list. She doesn't even realize she's holding her breath until she hears his voice at the other end of the line.

"_Hey__._" His voice is warm, and _happy, _and she almost wants to hang up, doesn't want to bring him into her fucking mess of a life, but she doesn't want to see anybody else right now but him.

"Finn," she says, and she can hear his intake of breath as he recognizes the tone of her voice. "Where are you right now?"

"_I'm at home…__ Quinn, are you–_"

"I'm coming over in ten minutes, okay?" she says, then hangs up the phone.

::

The minute her car halts to a stop in front of his house, Finn's on his feet from where he's been sitting on the grass. The first thing he does once she's barely out of the car is hug her, arms encircling her waist to clench around her back.

"Hey," he says, his breath ghosting the hairs at the top of her head. She bites her lip, hard, and snakes her arms around him, fingers fisting the back of his shirt, almost as if she's hanging on to him, on to his heart, which is so much fuller, so much steadier and stronger and more whole.

She doesn't say anything at first, and then Finn pulls away and looks down at her with a look on his face that makes her want to cry. "I can't believe you drove all the way here without even a coat on. It's fucking freezing. _Quinn,_" he admonishes, a tiny smile forming on his face, and she buries her head against his chest and laughs against her will.

::

They're sitting in her car with Finn in the driver's seat, his hoodie wrapped snugly around her shoulders, zippered all the way up to the base of her throat. She breathes in the musky smell of him, lingering on his hoodie, in the air inside the car, as she looks across the console at his profile, illuminated by the lights glowing from the dashboard. She feels her throat tighten, and she quickly averts her eyes, blaming her trembling palms on the cold.

They're sitting in her car at the edge of the cliff overlooking the city, eating takeout from McDonald's; neither of them are saying very much, just sitting in companionable silence, and it's refreshing, almost peaceful.

"It's a good thing I didn't let you convince me to get some Taco Bell," she says finally, and he looks over at her with a twinkle in his eyes that makes her heart flutter.

"Taco Bell is awesome."

"It's disgusting."

"So? It's still food. _Good_ food."

She laughs, then smiles when he offers her his carton of fries that she declines with a shake of her head.

"So," he says, smiling at her a bit shyly. "um."

She knows he's going to bring it up eventually. "Yeah."

"Are you going to tell me what happened, or am I supposed to guess?"

Something about his tone reminds her of what Santana said that day she ran out of the choir room, and it triggers something in her, a twinge of annoyance. "I don't want to talk about it right now."

"Quinn." Finn sighs. "You show up at my house, hysterical, and you never even told me why. We never…talk about stuff."

"I don't want to talk about it right now," she repeats, looking out the window, fingers stiffening on her lap. She feels like a hypocrite, the way she refuses to share her feelings, when it's the very reason why she got mad at her mom in the first place. "You said you wouldn't force me to say anything to you."

"I know," he says. She can see his reflection in the windshield, and she hates the look on his face and what it's doing to her heart. "But Q…"

"I just – look, I really…_like _how we've been hanging out these past few days. I really do, and I've never realized how much I missed your big idiot ass until I came back. But I'm going back to New Haven in a couple of days and I don't plan on returning to Lima until the summer and nothing good will come out of this. We're just hanging out, no feelings attached whatsoever. I just…really need you to stay out of my life. Okay?"

There's silence in the car; she doesn't hear anything else but the way Finn's breathing and her own heart beating out a fast rhythm in her ears.

"I can't."

She looks at him. "What?"

He looks back at her, his eyes unreadable and serious. "I can't stay out of your life, okay? Why are you so intent on pushing people away from you?"

She takes a deep breath that holds all the feelings and fears she holds most dear to her heart, and averts her eyes. "I don't know."

He scoffs a little, surprising her, but he doesn't look away from her, not once. "I can't stay out of your life anymore, Quinn. Not after we're getting to know each other again. Not after we're finally friends the way we never were. I don't want us to screw this up, what we have right now. I care too much about you, okay? You can't make me stay away."

Quinn thinks he looks like he wants to take care of her again, and she kind of hates the way she doesn't want him to but wanting to admit that she can't do this alone all the same.

So, she doesn't say anything. Finn tucks a curl behind her ear and that triggers her tears, and she doesn't stop for a long time, lets everything that's weighing down her heart be lifted away in that solitary moment.

::

She wakes up at Santana's.

She splashes water on her face heads downstairs, hears Finn and Santana's voices floating from the we're they're having breakfast in the kitchen, discussing her quietly.

She hears Santana say, "I'm really worried about her. I don't…"

"Yeah," Finn says with a heavy sigh, "me, too."

She kind of cries because their concern for her is palpable and real; she hates how she's never even realized it because she keeps pushing them away from her, because she refuses to accept any help, because she refuses to do things any other way other than by herself.

They smile at her when she joins them, and she knows her own returning smile is sincere.

::

When Finn goes to his car to grab a hoodie, Santana turns to her with somber eyes.

"I'm not forcing you to tell me anything," Santana says without preamble, "but just know that I'm here for you, okay?"

She feels her heart being torn apart, leaving it open and exposed, leaving a painful lump in her throat that she desperately tries to swallow. "I hate you," she says, and she sees Santana's laugh vibrate throughout her body.

"I hate you, too," Santana says. "Don't cry on me now, Fabray, god."

She doesn't, but she hugs Santana for real for the first time since they fell apart.

::

Finn takes her for a road trip to Cleveland. He puts on good music and drives really slow, so she relaxes in the passenger seat and tries not to grip her seatbelt too hard, instead opting to focus her gaze on his face as he talks, tries to breathe.

They get there three hours later, and he parks at some random spot, taking out his phone and squinting at the screen as he consults his GPS. Quinn laughs at the confused look on his face, grabbing his phone from him and Googling where the best place to eat in the city is.

They're walking side by side, not really talking, not really touching, as she takes in the sights and sounds and colors of the vibrant city around her, and feels like she can breathe properly again for the first time in days.

His left arm nudges her right, and she looks up at him with a smile. "What?"

"It's nice, being here, isn't it? I wouldn't mind living here," he tells her, gesturing at the busy street. "It's still Ohio, but it doesn't feel like it's gonna swallow me up like New York does. It doesn't feel too _big_ for me, you know?"

"It's not Lima. That's something."

"After this glee thing," he says, looking down at her with a thoughtful expression, "I think I'm going to try for college here. I think I wanna be like Mr. Schue; you know, study teaching and stuff."

"You would be good at that." He really will be, she really thinks so.

"It's just…I don't know. I know I have to move on with my life, but everything's so scary, you know? I don't want things to change yet. The way they are now. Like you guys being in Lima and everything. Being friends with you. Having dinner every night and stuff. It's nice. I still really like being with you."

She bites her lip a little, kicks at a pebble on the pavement, watches at it rolls and drops haphazardly in the middle of the street. "Why are you telling me all this?"

He shrugs, hitching up the zipper of his hoodie. "I don't know. I don't know who else to tell. I mean, aside from Puck, but it feels weird 'cause it's like he's got his life kind of figured out. Not totally, but I mean, he's not at a total loss anymore like he once was. And I just want to share things with you. This all feels so _real,_ you know? What I'm feeling."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know," he says again, and she feels her heart beating loudly in her throat. "Too many things are happening. All at once. I'm feeling too many things at once. Do you feel like that sometimes?"

"Sometimes," she says after a beat. She doesn't say that sometimes she doesn't feel anything at all.

They go to Whole Foods because Finn gets a text from Carole to pick up a few things, and Quinn watches as Finn tries to race this five-year-old kid with his shopping cart. The little boy with a Captain America backpack is giggling as they push their carts down the aisle, and Quinn hurries after them, her purse swinging against her hip, hissing at Finn to stop or they'll get thrown out of the store.

Finn looks over his shoulder and grins at her, and she tries to deny that there are butterflies in her stomach, tries to ignore the way they're fluttering upwards towards her chest.

::

They're walking around the Historic Little Italy Museum, and she's watching his profile as he talks, even though she's barely listening and she's barely paying attention to the art. He glances down at her and his dimples deepen when he smiles, and everything comes tumbling out of her mouth before she can stop herself.

"I had a huge fight with my mom."

Finn stops mid-talk, stops walking altogether, and turns to stare at her. "What?"

She sighs, then proceeds to tell him everything.

"It's not your fault, Quinn," Finn says, as they sit on a bench outside the museum, eating ice cream cones from a street vendor. "It's not fair that your mom's holding you back. You came back here for her and she doesn't even want to get better, or take care of herself. For you and for herself. You know?"

"I know," she says. "But I still feel bad all the same. She fucked up, I fucked up. I shouldn't have told her all those things."

"It's actually…good, you know?" he says, looking down at their hands resting on the bench side by side, not really touching. "That you didn't shut yourself out from your mom."

There's a pause, then his hand reaches out, his fingers closing the spaces between hers. She doesn't find it strange or out-of-place anymore. It just seems so _familiar_, and it scares her how it doesn't really scare her at all.

::

He buys her dinner, and they talk about Yale on the drive back to Lima. She's so tired, from walking around the city, from visiting all those museums and parks and shit, from ripping her heart open and exposing it for Finn to see. She's so tired, but she doesn't want to go back to Lima yet. She doesn't want this day to end, even though she's literally sitting in the passenger seat of his truck with her eyes half-closed, her left hand sitting on the console, loosely tangled in his like it's completely natural and real.

"It's nice," Finn says, after her story about the all-female secret society on campus that tried to recruit her, "how you're talking about stuff so openly."

A shoulder lifts. "I kind of like college. I can breathe there, you know?"

His dimples appear again, and she has this strange urge to reach over and run a hand on the creases on his cheeks. "I'm really glad you're having a good time at Yale. I'm glad you're figuring things out. It's not easy, but you are. You deserve this, Quinn. Probably more than anybody I know."

She smiles a little, and she tightens her hold on his fingers, but she doesn't say a word.

"I've really liked hanging out with you these past few days," Finn continues. "This is probably the healthiest non-relationship we've ever had," and she laughs because he kinda has a point there. He looks at her and his smile is different, almost _sad._ "I'm really gonna miss you when you leave."

That stupid lump is in her throat again, her blood rushing in her ears. "I still have over a week left."

"I know," he says, "but it's not gonna be the same."

* * *

From my count, the next chapter will start with day 10 of Quinn's stay in Lima. I swear I never meant it to be this long! I think I underestimated my Finn/Quinn feels. There are two more chapters to go; my writing got a bit sidetracked because I'm currently on a _Pitch Perfect-_slash-Anna Kendrick kick (meh, I'm not even sorry).

Review?


	3. Chapter 3

_If I forgot who I am,  
would you please remind me?_

::

Quinn goes to McKinley the next day with Santana. She tells her she just really missed glee club, but really it's mostly because she's trying to avoid her house and her mother, who she hasn't spoken to since her big blow up. Santana side-eyes her like she knows Quinn's fucking with her, but Quinn pretends she doesn't understand the look on her friend's face.

But mostly, well – she looks up from the book she's reading at the back of the choir room, and watches as the New Directions dance and sing along to _Jingle Bell Rock_. Santana's standing in front of them with Mike, hands on her hips as she spews out insults at their "lackluster number that nearly put her to sleep," and Puck and Mercedes are laughing from their perch on top of the piano.

Finn's standing to the side, laughing and shaking his head at them, and he glances in her direction, and Quinn can see the way his dimples deepen when he smiles.

There are a lot of reasons why she can't seem to stay away from McKinley, and it's partly because of this guy making her heart flutter with his smile she knows all too well.

::

She's just put on _Love, Actually_ when her phone beeps at one-thirty in the morning. She's been texting Finn for the past hour, so she already knows it's him before she even checks her messages. Her mother's sound asleep upstairs; Quinn didn't come home until midnight, and they didn't have a chance to speak, which is just the way Quinn likes it.

"_Im coming ovr in 10mins if that's alryt w/u?" _says Finn's text, followed by a "_:)_"

She totally doesn't smile when she texts back, _"I have ben & jerry's and a movie if you're up for it."_

"_Ur on," _comes his reply not a minute later, and she doesn't even get annoyed by his atrocious grammar as she stands to take the tub of ice cream from the freezer.

::

"I couldn't sleep," Finn says, as they're sitting on opposite ends of the couch, socking feet pressed against together in the middle as they share the tub of cookie dough ice cream. A box of warm pizza lies open on the coffee table in front of them, courtesy of Finn. "Sorry if I bothered you or anything."

The thing is, she wasn't bothered at all. "It's fine. I wouldn't have let you in if I didn't want you here, would I?"

He kind of smiles at her sheepishly then, and her heart kind of jumps when she notices the ice cream on the corner of his lip, so adorably Finn that she can't help but love him a little.

He's talkative throughout the movie ("I don't get it, why is that _Harry Potter _dude with that weird genie lady professor?") and it's endearing more than annoying, like she would've found it three years ago when they were sixteen and she had his heart in the palm of her hand. Somehow, she ends up beside him, shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip as the credits start to roll.

"Should I go pop out the DVD for a new movie?"

"No," she says, surprising herself, and lays her head on his shoulder, tugs on the front of his shirt to pull him closer. "Stay right here."

She can see the way his lips curve into a smile, and she feels how his heart's pounding away at his chest from where her palm lies on top of it, warm and familiar. She closes her eyes as the music from the credits keeps playing in the background, and she feels Finn's hand playing with the strands of her hair.

"You're messing it up," she mumbles, but it's half-hearted and her voice is heavy with sleep.

Finn just chuckles and goes, "This feels nice. Like old times."

It really is, but she doesn't say anything. She just really wants to sleep.

"It's like that day from junior year," Finn continues, oblivious, or maybe just struggling to say what's in his chest while he's already begun, "you told me that this is where you belonged…sometimes I still feel the same. Like this is where I belong, too."

She's not sure if she's heard him right, because blackness consumes her right then. She just remembers a pleasant thrumming in her chest and a feel of the warm, steady beating of Finn's own heart under the palm of her hand, the way it's always been with the two of them.

She wakes up with her head on the cushions and no trace of him in sight, except for the lingering scent of him sticking to her clothes and skin.

::

The winter festival's tomorrow, as Finn keeps reminding the glee kids dancing along to this awesome remix of top 40 hits that Tina found somewhere on Tumblr, but his effort is futile. Quinn smirks at him a little from where she and Santana are sharing earphones at the back of the choir room, listening to Santana's favorite playlist on her iPod.

"Guys!" he tries again, and finally resorts to banging hard on the cymbals to get everyone's attention. Everyone freezes, and Santana's complaining (loudly and in Spanish) from beside her, but Quinn just laughs.

"Great!" Finn grins a bit as he walks to the front of the room. "Finally got everybody's attention. So! Mr. Schue's coming back tomorrow to watch us at the festival, so you guys better give it your all, okay? I'm proud of all you and what we've accomplished so far. We're going to Nationals again this year and like, we're totally gonna defend our crown, I can feel it. I know you guys will be awesome."

It's cheesy and it's preachy, but it's Finn so she doesn't expect anything else. Kitty just scoffs from where she's filing her nails, looking bored. "Kitty-cat's got this, don't worry," and Quinn sort of smirks, because bitch or not, she kind of likes Kitty.

"We're having a party next week before all the grads leave for college again," Finn says. "Kind of like a send-off, so I expect every one of you to be there, alright?"

"Aww, that's sounds fun," Mercedes says, and everyone else follows suit, breaking out of their circle to give and take hugs, but all Quinn can concentrate on is how she didn't even want to come here in the first place and now feeling like she doesn't want to leave anymore. It's not the place she doesn't want to let go of just yet, really; it's more of the people, her friends, her Santana and her Brittany and her Finn. She finds his eyes amidst all the commotion that breaks out after his speech, and isn't at all surprised to see that he's studiously trying not to look at her, too.

She's grown so used to seeing Finn's stupid face every day over the last week and a half, and she tries to not let it bother her how she's not going to be able to anymore, that she has to go back to New Haven where her life is waiting for her, and he's staying in Ohio, miles away.

She doesn't want to admit it, not to anyone, but she's really going to miss this big goofball. So she walks over to him to give him a hug that he returns with warmth (and all the things they can't say to each other), and she stays in his arms for a few minutes, almost like she belongs there.

::

They stay late at school, and Quinn watches the way the sun sets and explodes into magnificent colors across the horizon, spilling into the choir room and filling it with a sense of warmth. It feels like a strange metaphor, if anything. Like everything is ending yet beginning all the same. It scares her how she doesn't know what's scarier – trying to change the situation or not realizing that the situation is trying to change her.

She ends up sandwiched between Finn and Santana as they're standing in a circle before they separate for the night, as is tradition before every performance day. Brittany and Sugar are spouting off nonsense while her friends giggle all around her, fingers latching onto each others' hands and smiles reflected in each others' eyes.

Her hands are being clutched tightly, her right in Finn's and her left in Santana's. (She hasn't felt so genuinely happy since she came back to Lima.)

Finn invites her for a drink, after everyone's gone their separate ways, and she's feeling so light and _happy_ that she just agrees, grabbing his keys from his hand and racing him to his car, her laughter echoing into the night.

::

"How's Rachel been doing?"

Finn kind of sputters into his drink, and places his glass back on the wet, sticky bar counter before it could spill all over them both. "Um, I don't really know. We haven't really…talked much. Since we broke up."

"Oh." She taps her fingers against the countertop. "Can't say I'm surprised."

He frowns. "That we don't talk much or that we broke up?"

"Both, I guess."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know." She shrugs a little; her head's starting to become all fuzzy and light, and she drops her glass and mentally reminds herself to 'drink in moderation'. "I mean…it's been there since high school, hasn't it? This…_thing_ between the two of you that keeps you apart."

"What thing?"

"You know. How you don't really fit into each other's lives. How you've been kind of holding Rachel back."

She knows she's said the wrong thing when his eyes darken, his hand retracting to a clenched fist on his lap. "What the fuck, Q?"

She thinks it's the alcohol pulling the words from her tongue, but she doesn't really know anymore. She doesn't know what possesses her to say, "Don't tell me it's not true. She's been destined for Broadway since she could walk and talk and you just…" _Aren't. You just don't fit._

Finn turns away from her, then, lifting his glass and downing its contents in one gulp. "You're such a bitch."

Quinn stares at him and doesn't say anything. There's a tense beat, and she can see the way he shifts, the way his mouth opens to apologize, but she doesn't let him. She just throws cash on the counter and leaves.

::

She knows who it is before she even opens her front door at two in the morning.

"I'm sorry, Quinn; I don't want us to fight," he says in a tired, sad voice, and she just sighs and lets him into the house, because there's just really no point in getting mad at him anymore (because she's leaving anyway, as she keeps reminding herself). They both fucked up, and she just wants the whole thing at the bar to be over and done with.

"I don't get it," she tells him as she settles on the couch next to him, the only light in the room coming from the lamp in the corner. It fills the room with a warm, yellow glow, and it feels nice, and comfortable, to be sitting here with him in the middle of the night. "We used to fight a lot before, and it took us days before we made up. Now…"

"Yeah, I know, it's weird," Finn agrees with a little laugh. He's not looking at her, but there's a sheepish grin on his face. "That's the thing, isn't it? We keep coming back."

She doesn't really know what to say to that, so she just settles deeper into the cushions and turns on the TV, and she tolerates a rerun of _Shaun of the Dead _at Finn's request.

They're halfway into the movie when Finn says quietly, "I really was out of line. I'm sorry."

She sighs. "Let's not, Finn, okay? It's over. It's okay."

"I know, but I just wanted you to know. I mean, you're leaving in a few days, and I don't want you to leave with this stupid thing hanging over our heads."

"It's not a big deal," she says, even though it kind of was, but she doesn't really care anymore. He's here and they're kind of okay and she's leaving, and it doesn't really matter.

(She really doesn't know why she keeps on telling herself that.)

They sit in companionable silence for a while when Finn suddenly laughs.

"What?"

"I just remembered all of a sudden," he says, a smile lighting up his face. "When we were freshmen, and it was, like, the first day of school and I saw you walking down the hall in a really pretty dress – I think it was a blue flowery pattern thing – and I freaking ran into the doorframe of my math class. I remember 'cause Puck slapped the back of my head and called me a moron."

She laughs, too, then says, "You're kinda not that guy anymore, though, but I don't mean that in a bad way. You've – I dunno, you've grown up a bit, I guess. You're different, but you're still _Finn, _you know? You're still my idiot ex-boyfriend who made me fall in love with him again a year after we broke up the first time."

"Yeah," Finn says, looking down at his hands with a smile itching on the corners of his mouth. "That kiss in the hallway."

"Yeah. It was a good kiss," she says, and they laugh. It feels weird, the way they're discussing this in such a casual, friendly manner; it feels weird that they're actually discussing this at _all._

Finn falls silent, then. It's never a good sign; she can see the questions burning in his eyes as his brow furrows, and she stiffens, braces herself for the fall, her walls automatically flying upright.

"Why _did _you kiss me?" he asks into his hands.

Oh. Her shoulders slump a little in relief, and she shrugs. "I don't know…it just felt right, I guess."

He nods. "It did."

She leans back against the throw pillows, watches him as he plays with his hands. She doesn't understand why they're having this conversation right now, and her heart is pounding a little louder – too fast and loud and out of control. She needs to abort the situation, because she can't handle the way she feels this very moment.

"Hey, Finn," she says, desperate for a change in subject. "Thanks for, you know, these past couple of days. Going on dinners and stuff. Helping with glee. Felt like old times. Hasn't felt like this since I left, not even when I came back."

"I know." His smile is a little sad, and her heart aches a little more. "Lima's gonna miss you."

"I doubt that, you know. But I guess I'm going to miss Lima, too…sort of."

"You gonna miss McKinley?"

"Not McKinley…the people, more like, I think."

He nods wordlessly again, then takes her hand, laces his fingers with hers, placing them on his lap, just looking.

She stares at the way their fingers are intertwined, and how it doesn't feel weird or awkward at all. It kind of scares her how completely natural it feels, how comforting and wonderful and missed. She looks at him, eyes inquiring. "Finn."

"Quinn, I–" He shakes his head, laughs a little bit. "I'm gonna miss you, you know. It's just that you've been here for more than a week and I've seen you every day and it makes me remember so many stuff and–"

"Finn," her heart's pounding in her ears again, insistent and loud and exhilarating, all at the same time, "stop. Don't–"

"No, Quinn. I – you shouldn't – you're so afraid of _acknowledging _that there are, in fact, people who care about you. I'm not like you, okay, I'm not scared of what I feel and letting other people know how I feel. I don't know, but I've been so confused lately and you're here and you're beautiful and you're _you_–"

"_Finn,_" she pleads, and she's on the verge of crying.

So, Finn shuts up. He turns to look at her and clutches her fingers tighter, then leans in, touching his nose to hers, his breath warm on her cheek, waiting for her to stop him.

She doesn't want to, so she doesn't. He kisses her, and Quinn feels her heart explode in her chest, filling her with warmth.

::

She wakes up to the sound of her curtains being drawn and an obnoxiously loud voice filling her bedroom. "Winter festival shit today! Up and at 'em, fat ass!"

She buries her head under her pillow and groans. "I don't want to go."

Santana frowns, grabbing her blanket from her and throwing it on the floor, ignoring her sleepy protests. "What's wrong with you?"

Santana's looking at her with an appraising eye that Quinn just sighs, then proceeds to tell her everything: how Finn kissed her, how she didn't stop him, how she pulled away and made him leave, closing the door in his face.

"I panicked," she finishes, a little helplessly.

Santana grimaces. "Okay, but, like, for the sake of my sanity, I'm gonna ask this again: this whole Finn/Quinn thing is actually happening? Seriously?"

"I don't know!" She throws her hands up exasperatedly. "It's not like I _planned _for this to happen when I came back to Lima. I didn't even know he was still here. It's not like we kept in touch or anything. Last night just…happened."

Santana sighs. "This is just like high school all over again."

"I know. This is stupid, I know, I know. I don't – like, _expect _you to understand. You're not exactly Finn Hudson's biggest fan."

"I'm not Finn Hudson's _anything,_" Santana corrects her, then sighs at the look on her face. "Well, it's you two. It's not like I'm really surprised; I saw the way he was looking at you, okay? It's that whole gassy infant thing, the works. I've seen that look before. I just don't want you to get hurt, okay? I mean, I was there for your pathetic Kelly Clarkson and Taylor Swift phase and I don't want to go through that again."

Quinn laughs. "You act like I wasn't there for your pathetic crying, holing up in bed, Adele phase, you know."

"Well, yeah," Santana says defensively, "but Adele is flawless."

Santana sits beside her, the bed dipping under her weight. There's a pause as Quinn looks at her hands, then she mumbles, "I don't know. I feel like he and I have both changed – grown up, you know? Like we're both finally capable of being happy with each other, I'd like to think. I'm just tired of letting guys I date define who I am. I'm not sure if I'm ready to date again until – until I learn how to find myself, you know? Or some shit like that. I don't want to go my entire life being dependent on other people or trying so hard _not _to become my mom and dad."

"You're not your mom and dad, okay?" Santana says. She's not touching Quinn's hand or putting an arm around her shoulders, but Quinn can feel the way Santana's warmth spreads through her as she leans against her side. "You're not. And if you're, like, not ready to date again, you shouldn't. I think that Finn will be…I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think he'd be willing to wait for you, anyway."

"Even if it takes me, like, five years?" She's smiling a little now, and she kind of wants this whole topic to be done with. It's kind of too early for this shit, this whole exposing herself thing, and it's completely exhausting and she's kind of done with this conversation. She doesn't know why she brought it up in the first place.

Santana laughs, leaning her head on Quinn's shoulder. "Even then."

::

They grab breakfast at Breadstix with the other grads save for Finn, who's already at the school with the rest of the glee members. When Puck and Quinn are left at the table, he stares at her kind of pointedly, and she frowns, leaning down to sip from her straw.

"What's with the face, Puckerman?" she says dryly.

"Well, if you _must_ know," Puck says just as sarcastically with a roll of his eyes, and she kicks his shin beneath the table. "Finn showed up at my house last night. No, wait – at four in the freaking morning – ruined my good night's sleep, by the way – looking like shit."

"Oh."

Puck's still watching her, and it's making her feel uncomfortable. She doesn't meet his eyes. "It's 'cause of you, Q. You let him kiss you, then slammed the door in his face and shit. The dude doesn't know _what _to think."

"I didn't mean–"

"Look," Puck says with a deep sigh, and she kind of marvels at how serious he looks and sounds, and maybe, just maybe, this is not the same Noah Puckerman she knew in high school anymore. Maybe they all went ahead and grew up a little over the course of five months. "I know you hate talking about feelings and shit, but – talk to him, okay? Just sit down…and talk."

::

Quinn tries to avoid Finn at the high school, and Santana rolls her eyes at her, but she doesn't care because she's afraid of facing Finn today a little. She doesn't know what to make of that kiss last night and it scares her. It's stupid, but it does.

She hangs with the girls instead, then gives Brittany a kiss on the cheek right before they're needed onstage, and she hurries away, feeling Santana's hand on her back. Her eyes follow Finn as he slips away behind the curtains.

She sits with Santana and the grads in the audience. While they're laughing and cheering as Jake spins Brittany around while lifting Kitty at the same time in a completely complicated-looking dance routine, Quinn feels a hand wrap around hers.

She looks up sideways at Finn, who's innocently watching the performance, pumping a fast in the air. His hand squeezes hers once, then twice.

It's a question of sorts, and she looks back at the stage and tries to ignore the butterflies stupidly fluttering around in her chest. She squeezes back, once, a tentative response, then pulls her hand back and starts pushing through the crowd away from her friends.

::

The number was beautiful, and there's a different kind of happiness filling her heart as she stands in a circle with the old and new members of New Directions with Mr. Schue, their hands linking them all together as one as they shout towards the heavens.

They go out on a celebratory dinner and drinks at this new bar that opened up in town. Everyone's soon tipsy and dancing and shouting and jumping all over the dance floor, and they all look happy and _free_. But Quinn chooses to sit at the bar, alone, staring at her drink.

Santana takes a break from dancing with both Puckermans and sits on the stool beside her, breathless and sweaty and happy. "So."

Quinn sighs. "So."

"Looks like you're having fun."

"Don't even."

Santana laughs as she raises a finger at the bartender and shouts, "Two tequila shots," before turning back to her. "You figured things out yet? I mean, like, every one of us saw you guys holding hands earlier, so. Kitty was already judging your taste and shit. Don't blame her, but seriously, bitch crazy."

Quinn laughs, fingering the rim of her cocktail glass. "I don't know what this is. I feel…I don't know _what _I feel. I just keep thinking about how I'm leaving in a couple of days and this won't turn out good anyway. We were always jinxed; it's not like we're _meant _to be together, anyway."

A sigh lodges its way out of Santana's throat, then she waves at the bartender to hurry the hell up with their drinks. "Then life's kind of screwing you over, don't you think?"

"It's always screwed me over." Quinn leans away from the counter, runs a tired hand through messy hair. "I'm so fucking tired of my shit."

"Eh, well. I'm tired of your shit, too, to be honest." Quinn punches her not-so-lightly on the arm, but they're both laughing. "But if there's one thing I know about you, it's that you know how to fight back. Just…" Santana stands and grabs one of the shot glasses the barman places in front of them, nodding across the room where Finn's leaning against the wall with a beer, trying to not to stare at them, "you need to fight for what you want, too, you know? And I'm not just talking about Finn."

Then she rejoins the dance floor.

::

Quinn takes a sip of her drink, grimacing as the alcohol burns her throat as she swallows. One of her favorite songs is playing, but she can't concentrate on anything else because she knows Finn is sneaking glances at her, and she feels sixteen all over again.

She catches his eye across the bar, and she makes the decision in a split-second. The next thing she knows is that she's walking over to him, taking away his drink and leading him to the dance floor.

"Quinn," he says, his face red as she turns to face him. "What are we doing?"

She wraps her arms around his neck and buries her face in his chest, breathing in his scent. "Just dance with me, okay?"

His arms snake around her waist, holding her close. She feels his lips against the top of her head, her chest flush against his, and she can feel their hearts beating as one, fast and alive.

"Quinn," he says hoarsely. "_Quinn_."

She shakes her head against his chest. "Not tonight. Tonight let's just have this. Okay?"

He sighs, but he nods, his arms tightening around her waist until her hips are cradled against his. He kisses her forehead and they sway slowly to the music, hip to hip and heart to heart.

"I'm sorry about last night," he mumbles against her hair, and she sighs.

"I'm sorry about last night, too," she says quietly. "I got scared, and…"

"It's okay, I get it." Finn sways slowly in a circle, bringing her with him. He's quiet for a second, then he says, "Did you regret it?"

She knows what he's asking. She knows what he wants to hear. She knows what she wants to say, but she doesn't know if she actually has the balls to say it.

Her breath comes out in a tumbling, "No," and she feels the way he relaxes in her arms as they keep swaying in tiny circles on the dance floor. Her hands fist against the back of his shirt as she breathes in the familiar scent of him, and there's a pang in her chest, because the song's almost over and she really doesn't want to let him go.

::

"I'm not really sorry for kissing you."

She shakes her head, leaning against the cool wall outside the bar and breathes in the cold evening air. "I know." She knows. She's not really sorry, either, if she's honest with herself, and she rarely ever is.

"I just began to feel too much about you again in such a short time." Finn laughs a little shyly, scuffing the bottom of his shoes on the gravel, his face red. "It came all too fast and it scares me because after everything I still want you."

"Finn…"

"Just – just tell me if you don't feel the same way, and I swear I'll stay away from you until you have to leave and I can forget any of this ever happened." Finn's looking kind of intensely at her, and it makes her heart thump out erratic beats in her chest. It's too overwhelming, what this is; it came all too fast and it scares her because maybe after everything she still wants him, too.

"But I don't want you to forget," she says in a small voice, and she catches the way his lips transition slowly into a smile.

He's towering over her, and she can feel the warmth radiating from his body. "I think I love you, you know. Like, again. Still. Always. I don't know what the difference is anymore. I just know that I do now."

She bites her lip and lets her hair hang like a curtain, hiding her face from his, but he reaches over and brushes it back, tucks it away behind her ear.

"You don't have to say it back," he says softly, and she nods. She just takes his hand in hers, and she's still scared out of her mind but maybe, just maybe, she's wanted this all along.

* * *

Thanks to everyone who dropped reviews, favorited, or whatever! Wasn't so sure about this entire thing in the first place so I'm happy that people like it. One more chapter left to go and I'm finally done with this what-was-supposed-to-be-a-oneshot. Review? :)


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